Government officers told to skip fraud prevention steps when vetting temporary foreign worker applications, Star investigation finds

Author(s): Alsharif, G. & Wallace, K.

Date: 2024

Resource: The Toronto Star.

As the Trudeau government promises to crack down on a temporary foreign worker program it admits has been abused, a Star investigation has revealed the government is fast-tracking applications by directing processing officers to skip crucial steps designed to prevent fraud.

Beginning in January 2022, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) directed staff to apply “streamlining measures” when evaluating the legitimacy of applications by employers who want to hire temporary foreign workers. […]

“This really shows a complete contradiction between the public-facing government policies and how the program is actually run,” said Catherine Connelly, a professor at McMaster University‘s DeGroote School of Business who has been studying the temporary foreign workers program for more than a decade who examined the internal ESDC documents.

“On one hand, we’re told the government will crack down on everything, and then, on the other hand, we see from the documents that this is clearly a rubber stamp,” she said. “If the government is not going to do even basic checks, how can the public have any confidence in anything?”

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Related Research Areas: Temporary and Gig Workers